Science of Happiness
College 1: Why happiness deserves scientific interest
What is going on?
- Bad is stronger than good
- Negative events have a bigger (longer lasting and more intense) impact than
positive events
- People are more distressed by the loss of €50 than they are made happy by
finding €50
- Negative information receives more attention and is processed more thoroughly
than positive information
Evolutionary explanation
- Humans are attuned to preventing bad things more than toward maximizing
good things
- A person who ignores danger may not live to see the next day
- ‘’Evolution doesn’t want you to be happy or satisfied. We are supposed to
survive and reproduce’’
- ‘’A huge happiness and positive thinking industry has helped to create the
fantasy that happiness is a realistic goal. Chasing the happiness dream is a very
American concept, exported to the rest of the world through popular culture.
Unfortunately, this has helped to create an expectation that real life stubbornly
refuses to deliver’’
Government wants us to be happy. Benefits of a happy population. Happier people…
- Are more productive
- Are healthier and live longer
- Contribute more to society
- Have better social relationships
World Happiness Reports
- Published annually since 2012 by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions
Network, based on data from the Gallup World Poll
- In 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 65/309 Happiness:
Towards a Holistic Definition of Development inviting member countries to use
data on the population’s well-being to guide public policy
- In 2012, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/281, proclaiming 20
March as International Day of Happiness to highlight the importance of well-
being as an aspiration for people all around the world
, - ‘’Our success as countries should be judged by the happiness of our people.
This means that national happiness can now become an operational
objective for governments’’
Chemist Ashutosh Jogalekar (2013)
- ‘’Happiness research is a great example of why psychology isn’t a science’’
- How exactly should ‘happiness’ be defined? the meaning of that word differs
from person to person and especially between cultures
- How does one measure happiness? psychologists cant use a ruler or a
microscope, so they invent an arbitrary scale
Science of happiness: focus on the subjective experience of happiness, its
antecedents and consequences. Scientific questions relating to happiness:
1. Do circumstances and living conditions matter?
2. For Diogenes, living in a jar, they didn’t. But how about us?
3. Do material conditions have an influence?
4. Is happiness your own responsibility?
5. Can you increase you level of happiness?
6. Should government create conditions that make you happy (in their own
interests)?
What is happiness?
- “A state of well-being and contentment” (Merriam-Webster, 2018)
- “The experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a
sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile” (Lyubomirsky ,2008)
- “Good mental states, including all of the various evaluations, positive and
negative, that people make of their lives and the affective reactions of people to
their experiences” (OECD, 2013)
Hedonic/subjective well-being as a composite of 3 related but distinct facets (tripartite
model)
1. Life Satisfaction (‘cognitive evaluation) = a reflective assessment on a person’s
life or some specific aspect of it: general
satisfaction with life or domain-specific
satisfaction with marriage, work,
friendship, leisure, the weather …
2. Positive Affect = a person’s feelings or
emotional states, measured with reference
to a particular point in time (momentary):
e.g., excited, interested, enthusiastic
, 3. Negative Affect = a person’s feelings or emotional states, measured with
reference to a particular point in time (momentary): e.g., nervous, afraid,
irritable
- General but untested idea: affect drives life satisfaction (rather than the other
way around)
Eudaimonic well-being
- Eudaimonia = a sense of meaning and purpose in life, o good psychological
functioning
- Eudaimonic = actualisation of one’s potential by fulfilling one’s daimon (true
self)
- Also referred to as ‘authentic happiness’
As different from
- Hedonic/subjective well-being = with a focus on affect (maximization of
pleasure and minimization of pain) and cognition
Consensus: two main approaches
- Hedonic/subjective well-being = a pleasant life (satisfaction with life / presence
of momentary positive affect / absence of negative affect)
- Eudaimonic = purpose and meaning in life
Controversy
- What is the best indicator of happiness? hedonic or eudaimonic measures?
but note that in policy making focus lies on hedonic/subjective well-being
- If and how do people account for their living conditions (financial and
immaterial) when reporting on happiness?
Generally, we ask people to self-report how happy they are, alternative measures of
happiness:
- Duchenne smiling with crinkling around the eyes as a true indicator or positive
affect: genuine smiles in college yearbook pictures predicted marital satisfaction
decades later
- Real-time recording of feelings of happiness (‘objective happiness’ in the
moment)
- Not that disciplines different from psychology determine happiness not by
examining subjective experiences but by mapping conditions that are supposed
to contribute to happiness (e.g., education or economic equality)
You cant fake a Duchenne smile. Or can you?
- The eye crinkling of a Duchenne smile is caused by activation of the orbicularis
oculi muscle (raising the cheeks) that is not under voluntary control (unlike the
muscle that bends the mouth upwards into a smile)
, - Fake smiles feature the upturned mouth but there's something missing in the
eyes
- New evidence that it may be hard to distinguish between role-playing genuine
positive emotion (e.g., pleasure at a good exam grade) vs role-playing fake
positive emotion (e.g., smiling in response to a gift that's not really liked)
(Gunnery et al., 2012)
Focus on self-report
- Despite disadvantages of self-report (social desirability, problems associated
with introspection),
- People are able to report on their feelings in metrics (different from what
chemist Jogalekar assumes)
- After all, happiness is about subjective well-being - so why not ask people
themselves?
- Even a single item on satisfaction with life (Cantril’s ladder) produces reliable
scores comparable with multiple item scales
- Albeit somewhat lower mean scores than measures with multiple items; multiple
items reduce random error from ambiguity in single items
Multiple item questionnaires
- Penn Authentic Happiness Inventory: Measures Overall Happiness
- Fordyce Emotions Questionnaire: Measures Current Happiness
- Gratitude Survey: Measures Appreciation about the Past
- Grit Survey: Measures the Character Strength of Perseverance
- Work-Life Questionnaire: Measures Work-Life Satisfaction
- PERMA: Measures Flourishing
- Meaning In Life Questionnaire: Measures Meaningfulness
- Oxford Happiness Questionnaire: includes self-esteem, sense of purpose, social
interest, sense of humor, aesthetic appreciation
- Yale Happiness Test: Check out at Coursera
- The 1-10 Happiness Scale
- The Happiness Test by Psychology Today
Satisfaction with life
- General or domain specific (e.g., finance, work, marriage, friendship, leisure…)?
- Domain specific evaluations are strongly correlated (.60) and possibly
influenced by common factor (e.g., personality or general circumstances)
- Overall satisfaction with life drives specific elements of domain satisfaction –
suggesting a top down rather than a bottom-up mechanism
- Although feedback loops may exist
College 1: Why happiness deserves scientific interest
What is going on?
- Bad is stronger than good
- Negative events have a bigger (longer lasting and more intense) impact than
positive events
- People are more distressed by the loss of €50 than they are made happy by
finding €50
- Negative information receives more attention and is processed more thoroughly
than positive information
Evolutionary explanation
- Humans are attuned to preventing bad things more than toward maximizing
good things
- A person who ignores danger may not live to see the next day
- ‘’Evolution doesn’t want you to be happy or satisfied. We are supposed to
survive and reproduce’’
- ‘’A huge happiness and positive thinking industry has helped to create the
fantasy that happiness is a realistic goal. Chasing the happiness dream is a very
American concept, exported to the rest of the world through popular culture.
Unfortunately, this has helped to create an expectation that real life stubbornly
refuses to deliver’’
Government wants us to be happy. Benefits of a happy population. Happier people…
- Are more productive
- Are healthier and live longer
- Contribute more to society
- Have better social relationships
World Happiness Reports
- Published annually since 2012 by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions
Network, based on data from the Gallup World Poll
- In 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 65/309 Happiness:
Towards a Holistic Definition of Development inviting member countries to use
data on the population’s well-being to guide public policy
- In 2012, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/281, proclaiming 20
March as International Day of Happiness to highlight the importance of well-
being as an aspiration for people all around the world
, - ‘’Our success as countries should be judged by the happiness of our people.
This means that national happiness can now become an operational
objective for governments’’
Chemist Ashutosh Jogalekar (2013)
- ‘’Happiness research is a great example of why psychology isn’t a science’’
- How exactly should ‘happiness’ be defined? the meaning of that word differs
from person to person and especially between cultures
- How does one measure happiness? psychologists cant use a ruler or a
microscope, so they invent an arbitrary scale
Science of happiness: focus on the subjective experience of happiness, its
antecedents and consequences. Scientific questions relating to happiness:
1. Do circumstances and living conditions matter?
2. For Diogenes, living in a jar, they didn’t. But how about us?
3. Do material conditions have an influence?
4. Is happiness your own responsibility?
5. Can you increase you level of happiness?
6. Should government create conditions that make you happy (in their own
interests)?
What is happiness?
- “A state of well-being and contentment” (Merriam-Webster, 2018)
- “The experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a
sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile” (Lyubomirsky ,2008)
- “Good mental states, including all of the various evaluations, positive and
negative, that people make of their lives and the affective reactions of people to
their experiences” (OECD, 2013)
Hedonic/subjective well-being as a composite of 3 related but distinct facets (tripartite
model)
1. Life Satisfaction (‘cognitive evaluation) = a reflective assessment on a person’s
life or some specific aspect of it: general
satisfaction with life or domain-specific
satisfaction with marriage, work,
friendship, leisure, the weather …
2. Positive Affect = a person’s feelings or
emotional states, measured with reference
to a particular point in time (momentary):
e.g., excited, interested, enthusiastic
, 3. Negative Affect = a person’s feelings or emotional states, measured with
reference to a particular point in time (momentary): e.g., nervous, afraid,
irritable
- General but untested idea: affect drives life satisfaction (rather than the other
way around)
Eudaimonic well-being
- Eudaimonia = a sense of meaning and purpose in life, o good psychological
functioning
- Eudaimonic = actualisation of one’s potential by fulfilling one’s daimon (true
self)
- Also referred to as ‘authentic happiness’
As different from
- Hedonic/subjective well-being = with a focus on affect (maximization of
pleasure and minimization of pain) and cognition
Consensus: two main approaches
- Hedonic/subjective well-being = a pleasant life (satisfaction with life / presence
of momentary positive affect / absence of negative affect)
- Eudaimonic = purpose and meaning in life
Controversy
- What is the best indicator of happiness? hedonic or eudaimonic measures?
but note that in policy making focus lies on hedonic/subjective well-being
- If and how do people account for their living conditions (financial and
immaterial) when reporting on happiness?
Generally, we ask people to self-report how happy they are, alternative measures of
happiness:
- Duchenne smiling with crinkling around the eyes as a true indicator or positive
affect: genuine smiles in college yearbook pictures predicted marital satisfaction
decades later
- Real-time recording of feelings of happiness (‘objective happiness’ in the
moment)
- Not that disciplines different from psychology determine happiness not by
examining subjective experiences but by mapping conditions that are supposed
to contribute to happiness (e.g., education or economic equality)
You cant fake a Duchenne smile. Or can you?
- The eye crinkling of a Duchenne smile is caused by activation of the orbicularis
oculi muscle (raising the cheeks) that is not under voluntary control (unlike the
muscle that bends the mouth upwards into a smile)
, - Fake smiles feature the upturned mouth but there's something missing in the
eyes
- New evidence that it may be hard to distinguish between role-playing genuine
positive emotion (e.g., pleasure at a good exam grade) vs role-playing fake
positive emotion (e.g., smiling in response to a gift that's not really liked)
(Gunnery et al., 2012)
Focus on self-report
- Despite disadvantages of self-report (social desirability, problems associated
with introspection),
- People are able to report on their feelings in metrics (different from what
chemist Jogalekar assumes)
- After all, happiness is about subjective well-being - so why not ask people
themselves?
- Even a single item on satisfaction with life (Cantril’s ladder) produces reliable
scores comparable with multiple item scales
- Albeit somewhat lower mean scores than measures with multiple items; multiple
items reduce random error from ambiguity in single items
Multiple item questionnaires
- Penn Authentic Happiness Inventory: Measures Overall Happiness
- Fordyce Emotions Questionnaire: Measures Current Happiness
- Gratitude Survey: Measures Appreciation about the Past
- Grit Survey: Measures the Character Strength of Perseverance
- Work-Life Questionnaire: Measures Work-Life Satisfaction
- PERMA: Measures Flourishing
- Meaning In Life Questionnaire: Measures Meaningfulness
- Oxford Happiness Questionnaire: includes self-esteem, sense of purpose, social
interest, sense of humor, aesthetic appreciation
- Yale Happiness Test: Check out at Coursera
- The 1-10 Happiness Scale
- The Happiness Test by Psychology Today
Satisfaction with life
- General or domain specific (e.g., finance, work, marriage, friendship, leisure…)?
- Domain specific evaluations are strongly correlated (.60) and possibly
influenced by common factor (e.g., personality or general circumstances)
- Overall satisfaction with life drives specific elements of domain satisfaction –
suggesting a top down rather than a bottom-up mechanism
- Although feedback loops may exist
